Keith Urban Talks 2015 ACM Awards Performance, Working on New Music

Keith Urban is hard at work on some new music — but don't expect him to tell you when fans can hope to hear it.

"Depends on who you ask," he tells Taste of Country with a laugh. "The label has a timeline. I'd like to get it done sooner than later."

Urban spoke with ToC's Billy Dukes in Dallas on Friday (April 17), where he's getting ready for the 2015 ACM Awards. He says the process for the new album isn't that different from what he's always done.

"It's just always, everything's clean slate. Every album is just, go in and record songs I love, that resonate with me, and get 'em captured honestly. That's it," he shares.

That doesn't mean the new music won't be a step in a different musical direction. Urban says it comes naturally to him to grow with each new project.

"That's just where I'm at," he notes. "I absorb a lot of stuff, especially traveling as much as I do. I have the Shazam app on my phone, and I Shazam stuff all the time with this eclectic array of music, and find influences from just everywhere to take with me into the studio."

Urban is nominated for Video of the Year in the ACM Awards, which air on Sunday (April 19). He and Eric Church are opening the broadcast with a dual performance. They currently have a duet, "Raise 'Em Up," in release.

The superstar's wife, Nicole Kidman, won't be on hand for the special event. "She's working. She's bummed out," he says. "She's in Australia, of all places, shooting a film, so I've been commuting backward and forward every week during Idol. It's been quite the commute. I fly to L.A., do Idol and fly straight back down again."